Malaria is major public health problem, causing over 1 million deaths per year worldwide. The discovery and development of new antimalarial drugs is becoming increasingly urgent as drug- resistant strains become increasingly prevalent. We propose to isolate the active antimalarial compound(s) present in the crude extracts in at least 14 previously uninvestigated plants that have promising antimalarial activity.

HIV and AIDS represent a critical threat to public health in the United States and internationally. This annual symposium contributes to expanding the knowledge base that will ultimately result in a vaccine to prevent transmission of HIV and treatments for those currently living with AIDS.

STDs and unwanted pregnancy create tremendous burdens on individuals, on U.S. society, and on the national health care costs. The work in this project will provide new approaches for preventing and treating STDs and preventing unwanted pregnancy. Specifically, we will test a new approach for treatment of HIV/AIDS infections. The approach will emphasize materials and approaches that can be translated into clinical products, which would provide new opportunities for enhancing health.

The mission of the TxBiomed component is to generate the Marburg virus and propagate it, determine the virus' consensus sequence, experimentally determine the LD50 of guinea pig adapted Angolan Marburg virus, and evaluate the immunogenicity and efficacy of Marburg and Ebola Zaire VLPs monovalent vaccines when administered in two different adjuvants to guinea pigs and Non-Human Primates.

Gene copy number variation (CNV) is ubiquitous in eukaryotic genomes and the resultant dosage changes can play an important role in determining phenotype. We aim to define the extent, evolutionary dynamics and functionality of CNV in the malaria parasite genome (Plasmodium falciparum). To achieve this we will use comparative genomic hybridization (cGH) which provides an efficient tool for assaying both CNV and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and is particularly effective in haploid genomes.

TxBiomed will furnish the necessary services, qualified personnel, material, equipment and facilities to perform vaccine testing using the MVA-BN-Marv vaccine against 3 viruses.